by Jay Hughes
In reality, she was just that.
When she left for the night, Klinger and I took a long walk through the neighborhood. I wondered what they were all thinking, saying, planning.
The horrible green thing.
The most beautiful creature on Earth.
And there is only one of them. Someday, I will dress her in style and take her out to meet the world.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I brought the dresses home and called Tammy.
"How old is Jill?"
"You don't know?"
"Tammy, are you wearing underwear?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Same fuckin' reason I asked about Jill's age. I didn't have the information."
"Yes, and I'll have to check. Let's see ... finding the file ... finding ... finding ... yeah ... we have her Earth age at about ... no, this is wrong ... fourteen?"
Gulp. "In space years, how much is that? Is it like Klinger?"
"Who's Klinger?"
"Cross-dresser. I mean, dog years, you vixen."
"Well, if she was a dog, which she isn't ... he-he ... I won't follow that one, Jay ... she'd be ... why don't you just ask her yourself?"
"What, and give up great phone sex?"
"We aren't having phone sex, Jay."
"Maybe you aren't. Anyway, did she ever tell you what kind of clothes she likes to wear?"
"Got a sexy black teddie in mind, Jay?"
I moved my coffee cup around and considered the situation ... did I have Tammy right where I wanted her or what? "With my teeth, I gently pull on the little ribbon, easing away from your hot, sweaty breasts ... and then I..."
"No way! I'm not doin' that again!"
"OK, then what's her damned shoe size?"
"Wart-face gave her a pair of boots. I can ask."
"Ask."
Long pause. "Nine and a half."
"Tammy, put your hands up on the desk."
Long pause. "They are."
"No, they aren't."
Long pause. "What makes you so sure?"
"'Cause you're breathing hard. Tam, if Jill and I ever split up, what say ... you and I get together?"
"My husband wouldn't like it."
"Then leave him at home."
***
I called Vicki.
"Vick, what kind of clothes does Jill like?"
"You didn't buy a black teddie, did you?"
"I take my teeth, gently tugging at the little ribbon..."
"Hughes, I've been married twenty years come Sunday. It takes more than that to get into my panties."
"Vick, I bought Jill some dresses for the party and I need some help. Help!"
"Don't buy wool."
"These are either cotton or plastic."
"Don't buy polyester."
"That leaves cotton, Vick."
"What colors?"
"Gray, lavender, mauve, avocado and some other shit."
"You didn't get avocado! She'll look like a cabbage."
"She already does look like a cabbage, Vicki."
"Come by the bar with them, and we'll talk."
***
Off to Soapy's with my cache of dresses. I was half hoping Vicki knew somebody who had a pair of boat-sized women's shoes that might go with the dress.
Depending on the dress.
"Black shoes," Vicki told me. "It's winter."
"White would look better," I said. "It hides that scummy stuff that gets on them when they get wet."
"Black, Jay. High heels are nice, but she's already tall enough to play in the NBA."
"Our own version of Space Jams," I said. I fiddled with the potato chips, wondering if an Essie-fried burger would be too much on top of my shopping excursion.
"Jill's in love with you, you realize," Vicki said, cashing out her drawer for the day. "Go grab a table. I'll be over in five minutes."
Jill was in love with me. Why did that not surprise me?
"Here's the problem," Vicki said when she sat down. "She doesn't relate to the emotion and she can't express it."
"She's told me she loves me."
"She's heard the phrase. It's the other stuff that comes with it ... she's confused about it all."
"Who ever wasn't?"
"We at least understand the pain, comfort, happiness, sadness ... the whole range of emotions. They hurt sometimes, but we know what it all means ... Jill doesn't relate to any of it."
I shook my head. "So, shoot me if I fuck up here ... but what am I supposed to do?"
"Jay, she isn't human. She's learned the language and the customs ... except that part about eating tree limbs ... and she knows almost everything about Earth that she needs to know to get by. In her culture, emotion isn't part of the package."
"She gets plenty emotional."
"She yells at you, gives you orders ... I've heard her do that. Sometimes, you respond. Sometimes, not. That concerns her because she doesn't know about asking. My guess is she was a fairly important person back home. My other guess is that she has never had a need for emotional attachment."
"A lot of people are like that," I said.
"There you go again, trying to mix people in with it." Vicki stirred her drink and looked me in the face with a Vicki-style I'm-a-bartender-and-know-stuff look. "We talk, Jill and Essie and me."
I nodded.
"Jill has to mate twice a year. She doesn't have to give birth but it's important if she does. There's something in her chemistry. Deep down, she wants to mate with you, but she knows she can't. And she also knows ... or has learned ... about relationships and what they mean. She doesn't understand it yet."
Vicki was pulling the rug out from under me. I just came in with four dresses and was going home with a headache. I can blame the potato chips. "I was planning to discuss all this with her."
"You'll be lost, confused, hurt and ... she might even leave you if you do."
I felt the chill. "How'd you know I needed to bring this up with her?"
"She called today and said you were planning to discuss something like this. I think she wanted me to tell you."
Long pause. "Well, I guess I can let her love me on her terms."
"You ready for that?"
"So far, so good."
"She has to mate, she says."
"What do you suppose that's like?"
"Tedious."
I winced. "That's not what happens when I do it."
"You make love to her. There's a difference." Vicki finished her drink. "I think I might just get potted tonight."
"Do you get horny afterward?"
Vicki's mouth opened wide. "Nah, I just get bummed out and sleep it off."
"I did learn that Jill, beer and tremendous sex go together."
"You're a sexy guy, Jay."
I smiled. Of course. "I got 'em comin' in from the other side of the galaxy to sleep with me."
"Wanna know what else I found out?" Vicki knows stuff, maybe more than the piss-vial merchants downtown. "When she drinks water, it stimulates her sex drive."
"All it does for me is make me go to the bathroom. I never drink the stuff, though. How'd you come up with that conclusion?"
"Jill spends all day being tested, probed, analyzed and measured ... and then she calls me and tells me what she's learned about herself."
"She told me she chews on some kind of bark. What's the difference?"
"We're back to square one, aren't we?" Vicki turned to Jack, the night bartender. "Another whiskey, my friend."
"So, what about the dresses?"
"Definitely not the avocado."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
She was hobbling a little when she walked up the back steps, ripped open the door and sat down at the table.
"Hurt your foot?"
She held it up. A little dab of yellow stuff I presumed to be her blood had oozed along her toe. "I stepped on a thorn."
"Out eating locust trees? We need to get you some shoes."
"I wear magno-boots all the time.
It's fun to walk around and feel the plants under my feet."
"Ready?"
"These people are terrible. I don't like any of them."
"I'm not wild about it, either. But we did promise ... or, rather, you did. I suppose if you left town, they'd be upset."
"I didn't come here to run away."
I led Jill through the living room, out the front door, stopping once to let Klinger have his mandatory Jill-sniff moment. "I can't get over how he takes to you. He hates women."
"Maybe he doesn't recognize me as one." She bent over to pet the little guy.
I stared at her incredible ass and legs, which did their best to compliment her space suit. "If he doesn't recognize you as a woman, I'll pick up the slack." I gave her a pat on the ass. "I gotta get you some cut-offs, girl."
"Take me to these people!"
"Wow, stop giving orders."
"Was it an order? That's where we're going. What is cut-offs?"
"Something that makes me stiff."
The dark clouds that had rolled in signaled one of Coffee Creek's more interesting phenomena ... the gully-washer. It had started to sprinkle by the time we got to the car.
"Get in, quick!" I said.
"I want to feel it." She stood there, looking up. She opened her mouth and let the rain fall into her face, over her lips and neck. She seemed to glisten as the water trickled down her cheeks and chin. By the time I got her into the car, it was pouring. "Warm rain. Just like it's supposed to be back home."
We drove on through it. She was soaked, barefoot and as happy as hell.
"They will ask a lot of questions."
"I have lots of answers." She didn't wait for me to open the door for her, always a step in the right direction if a woman wants my affection.
I tried to keep up with her as she walked, dripping wet, toward the police station. I never met anybody who wanted to go there. I think she decided she could just go in, state her case ... and be done with it.
Wrong.
A gaggle of medical people huddled in a group in the lobby. Maryann Pendrigrass stepped forward, obviously in charge. A little squat woman with gray hair and glasses that sat on the end of her nose, she didn't look like the type who'd kid around.
"Your car windows rolled up?" I asked.
"I didn't drive."
"Didn't ask that," I said. "Where do we go?"
She gave me that what's-this-we-shit look and smiled up at Jill, who gazed around the lobby, checking on this, admiring that. The big green potted tree over by the front door caught her eye. Stop drooling, Jill. It's artificial.
Pendrigrass and her bevy of pencil-pushers, five in all, led us down a corridor where we met Lundquist and the CIA freak named Jones. He pointed to a room. We went in. Lundquist and Jones departed. Pendrigrass sat at the end of the table. Jill sat next to her. The others just found seats. I stood along the wall, next to the door. I'd be asked to go for coffee, I assumed.
"I trust your night was pleasant," Pendrigrass said to Jill. "You're all wet, girl." She almost patted Jill on the wrist but drew back.
It doesn't rub off, Maryanne.
Jill surveyed the throng, whose collective lower lip hung down. This group was in awe of my space babe. Boy, if you only knew ... damn, this woman can fuck!
Pendrigrass looked up at me. "You two should not have come into personal contact just yet."
I shrugged. She had a point.
"Jill, don't take this wrong but ... there are various issues here ... some of them serious. We don't know if it's ... ah ... safe for us with you here. You do understand. In fact, we're taking a chance just coming into contact with you."
Jill nodded. "It's safe. We've researched the planet. If anything, I'm the one who's at risk."
Everybody nodded. They knew. Earth sucks. Actually, Earth doesn't suck. The people who live on it do, however.
"How much research?" the skinny guy with the goatee asked.
Jill rolled her hands around. "We've done atmospheric tests ... culture samples ... molecular studies ... we know what bacteria breed here."
"This is amazing," goatee face said. "How long have you been here? Where do you come from? How many of you..."
Pendrigrass held up a hand. "We can't answer all our questions just now. I'm just concerned about whether we ought to quarantine her before we let her just run free on the planet. For all we know, our civilization could be adversely affected."
"Yeah, or improved," I said.
Everybody looked up at me. Like, I'm not the scientist here, just the lover. I own the dog. I roll up my car windows when it rains. "I'll go get coffee if anybody wants it."
Silence.
Shut up, Jay. These are professionals.
"I'm curious," another skinny guy with glasses squeaked, "is how you look so ... so ... human. Except for the obvious, of course."
So much for scientific questions.
Jill laughed. "I've seen your science fiction movies. You all have this perception that people from other worlds are these little skinny guys with bulging heads and no hair ... hands with suction cups on the ends of their fingers. Where on Earth ... oops, I guess ... well, whatever ... did you get that notion? Life forms evolve the same way all over our solar system. We have twenty-three planets that support life. We find similarities on all of them."
"Twenty-three?" Goatee face was taking notes.
Don't write that down. That's classified.
Jill smiled at the group. A couple of them were just taking notes, not looking up. Well, Marcia, skinny redhead, was looking up. I had her pegged as a lesbian who wanted to try out some green meat. Yeah, it's good ... better than you'll ever get.
"So, you're fairly typical of the humanoids in your solar system?" Pendrigrass asked.
"I'm not humanoid," Jill said. "I have all the features ... lungs, pores, hair, tits ... fingernails ... teeth." She opened her mouth. "Teeth are a little different. We eat different things."
I'll say. Jill looks at a chainsaw the way I look at a knife and fork.
"Not humanoid?" The redhead had spoken.
"Nitrogen-based chemistry."
She's a plant, folks. A Venus flytrap, capable of turning a man into a helpless piece of jelly.
"Your diet is primarily what?" Pendrigrass had her nose up now. Information, information. Tell all, Jill.
"Wood fiber."
The redhead made a note. "How do you reproduce?"
"The same way you do."
"Oh."
Jill smiled. It was difficult to tell if she blushed. Green is green is green. "I have that dilemma coming up in a few weeks."
Silence.
"Don't worry," she told the group. "I have a mating period twice a year and it's time. It will pass."
Jill and I will find something to do to fend off the boredom.
"How many of you are there?" goatee face asked, again.
"On my ship, three."
"Other ships?" Pendrigrass asked.
"I can't tell you that."
Nothing like a little dramatic tension to spur me out for coffee. I'd known Jill for four days and I could see she was no slouch when it came to instigating a little intrigue. Her motives weren't clear, but I was enjoying the hell out of it.
Lundquist met me in the hallway. "There are other folks here with questions. We decided to cut it up and let one group at her at a time."
I nodded. "Makes sense. There isn't any danger, you realize."
"I don't realize that," he grumbled. "You need something?"
"Coffee."
He led me into his office and poured a cup of Marine-grade swill. I waved off the sugar and powdered creamer.
"You gonna cooperate with us?"
I caught his meaning. "Like, am I in cahoots with the alien invaders? If I think there's a risk to the quality of life on Earth, you'll be the first person I tell."
"I never suggested that."
"Yes, you did. All I know is she came up the alley, asked to use the bathroom,
petted my dog and decided to spend a couple of evenings with me. We chat and..."
"Do you have personal contact?"
"Like ... do we fuck? Captain, that's not your concern."
"I'd say it is."
"I'd say that if the police department or any other form of government makes that their concern, then I might be tempted to form an alliance with the aliens. As long as I do what I want to do in my own house with whoever happens to be there willingly..." I stopped. Lundquist didn't need a lesson on my constitutional rights.
I just wondered what rights these people extended to Jill.
She has no embassy on Earth.
Just me.
And from the looks of things, I was being pushed off into the corner.
***
We finished the Spanish Inquisition Part I at around one in the afternoon. The steamy heat had returned.
I cut right at City Park, headed down the hill toward the river where I decided to give Jill an afternoon with nature, Coffee Creek style. She'd complained about how cold it was inside the police station. Air conditioning and Jill aren't friends.
I had hoped she could digest what she'd said and what she'd hoped to say, turn it into conventional conversation and take another step forward in her visit to Earth.
She sat there on the log, her feet in the water, staring out into the blue, cloud-spotted sky. "Your sun comes up backward."
"Really?"
"We have a retrograde planet. It's the only one in our solar system."
I never paid much attention to where and how the sun rose and set, but I was beginning to take a look at life in some rather peculiar ways. I bit into the strange conclusion that I was the only human who was on Jill's side. I suppose it's a rather common malady.
Of course, there was Betty and Herb Fawthrop.
And Vicki.
I withheld judgment on everybody else, with the possible exception of the wiry red-haired medical clerk. There was a deal ready to be made, if I needed it.
Within a few days, I knew my time with Jill would diminish. She knew it too and the look on her face as she dangled her feet in Coffee Creek gave away a sense of pain.
